MUSICAL COURIER
16
MUSIC AND PUBLIC EDUCATION
By GEORGE H. GARTLAN Director of Music in the Public Schools of New York City
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY—A SINGING REVIVAL
An Interesting Account of the Beginning of Public School Music, by Karl W. Gehrkens, and What Is Being Done Today
March 1; 1923
to fulfill its ultimate mission. It took us a Ion״ time to wake up to all this, but gradually a music supervisor here and a thinker there began to realize that something was wrong,_ and little by little more song-singing crept in.
William Tomlins, so well known in connection with the development of children’s singing in Chicago, did much to foster the new type of work, and C. C. Birchard, in his dual capacity as educational thinker and publisher, had for many years consistently used his influence to promulgate the idea. The publication of the Modern Music Series in 1898 did much to hasten the song-singing movement, and to Eleanor Smith and Robert Foresman must be given the credit for supplying us with the first set of school music books containing an adequate number of really beautiful songs. The arrangement of material in these books was not ideal, but the books contained dozens of really charming melodies and the plan of teaching the books allowed plenty of time for singing.
We are told that in meeting boards of education for the purpose of persuading them to adopt some series of books, the representatives of the various book companies would gather in the room in which the school board was meeting. Each in turn would then tell how well the material in his particular set of books was arranged, how logically the sequence of intervals and rhythm had been worked out, and so forth. When it came to the turn of the representative of the Modern Series, he would rise and sing half a dozen little songs, _ and without any further explanation would say, “That is the kind of thing we have in our books, gentlemen.” Then the board of education would vote, and in almost every case the Modern Series would win out over the others.
This growing prestige of the Modern Series naturally worried the publishers of the other systems of school music, and before long these other publishers followed suit by putting out similar material. Ginn & Company revised the Educational Music Course and published the New Educational Music Course in its stead. This was a series of books still based on the sight-singing idea, but containing a large amount of really good song material and aiming throughout at esthetic response. The American Book Company published a modification of the old Natural Series called the Melodic Music Readers, and later pesuaded Eleanor Smith and Robert Foresman (the authors of the original Modern Series) to compile an entirely new set of books called The Eleanor Smith Music Course. Silver, Burdett & Co., instead of revising the Modern Series as they had been urged repeatedly to do, brought out an entirely new system, The Progressive Music Series. And here■ again we have a set of books in which the main objective is musical experience as derived from the singing of a large quantity of good music. Other sets of books have been and are now being published, and in all cases the editors and publishers are basing their strongest appeal for using any set of books on the plea that the books which they publish contain the best collection of beautiful music yet put together.
All this is at it should be, and as a result of the shifting emphasis in our teaching theories together with the rivalry engendered among the publishers of school music books that has given us the finest school music material in the world, music in the public schools is rapidly becoming a thing of joy to the children themselves and of deep and enduring satisfaction to the community.
Let me not be misunderstood. It is not that we are failing now to teach children to read music; as a matter of fact, children in the public schools are learning, to read music with remarkable skill and intelligence. But the attitude of both teacher and pupil is altogether different. We are coming more and more to emphasize the music that is being read rather than the reading of the music, and as a result there are literally thousands and hundreds of thousands of children in our American public schools who are coming to love and appreciate the beauty of music as a result of the esthetic satisfaction offered them by the songs they are singing in school. And without question, the extremely significant instrumental movement, now merely in its inception, had its origin in the love of music fostered by the change in school music methods and ideals which developed early in the present century: a change begun by discarding the old objective—skill in sight-singing— for the newer and more reasonable one, love and appreciation of beautiful music.
Josef Diskay’s Success on Keith Circuit
Josef Diskay, who can no longer be known as the Hungarian tenor, since he is now an American citizen, continues to delight many an audience along the Keith circuit. Mr. Diskay has signed for forty weeks with B. F. Keith and is now making a tour of the Keith houses. He is appearing with such success that many demands are coming from delighted music lovers asking for another appearance; so in all probability, his vaudeville engagement will be succeeded by a concert tour.
Mr. Diskay possesses a tenor voice of rare power and sweetness, and his engaging stage presence immediately puts his audience into a receptive mood and makes his splendid singing doubly enjoyable.
Activities of Shaw Artists
Charles Long, a pupil of W. Warren Shaw, has been engaged as solo bass of the First Methodist Church, Germantown. Edward Jacoby, another Shaw artist, appeared on February 6 and 7 in the part of the Mikado in the presentation of this_ Gilbert and Sullivan opera by the Cynwyd Operatic Society. Horace Hood, baritone, also from the Shaw studios, has been engaged for the May Festival at Harrisburg.
Macbeth for D. A. R. Benefit in St. Paul
Florence Macbeth, coloratura soprano of the Chicago Opera, is giving a concert in St. Paul, Minn., under the auspices of the D. A. R., of which she is a member, at the Auditorium on the evening of March 5, the proceeds of which are to be used for the erection of a state monument for the soldier dead.
Large Audience for Middleton in Home Town
Indianola, Iowa, heard Arthur Middleton, the baritone, in recital on Lincoln’s Birthday. As the well known singer formerly attended school in that city, an unusually large 'audience turned out to greet a “favored son.”
music to all children, as attempted in Hartford as early as 1830 and more systematically under Lowell Mason in Boston in 1837, is to be traced back directly to the influence of Pesta-lozzi, and at first the Pestalozzian principles seem to have been followed more or less consistently. Even during the ’60s and ’70s this influence was felt in the work of Luther W. Mason, who has become familiar with and interested in the Hohman system of music teaching as used in the German schools. This system was based on the pedagogical ideas promulgated by Froebel, Pestalozzi, Regeli, and the National Music Course by Luther W. Mason and George A. Veazie-^published by Ginn & Company—was based on this Hohman system.
But H. E. Holt, another Boston music teacher, had entirely different ideas on the subject of school music, insisting that the main objective was to be skill and exactness in sight-singing, rather than warmth and expression in song-singing. Mr. Holt and George W. Tufts therefore arranged a new set of music books for school, use, these being based on the idea that the interpretation of musical signs is the all-important thing. This new system was called the Normal Music Course and after a short time the books were taken over by the newly organized publishing house of Silver, Burdett & Co. These two systems, the National and the Normal, were most actively sponsored by two salesmen, Robert Foresman, who advocated the rigid and precise sight-singing scheme involved in the Normal Series, and E. W. Newton, who, with equal zeal and enthusiasm, backed the rote-song method and the National System. It seems incredible, but we are told on good authority, that each of these men gradually converted the other so that in time both completely reversed their theories, each man abandoning his own position and adopting the principles advocated by the other. Be that as it may, toward the end of the century the house of Ginn & Company brought out a new set of books, The Educational Music Series, which were based on the theory that the chief function of music teaching in the public schools is to teach pupils to read music. . . . The big thing was to drill children in reading music, and the Educational System, the Natural System (published about the same time by the American Book Company), and the old Normal System apparently were all based on the theory that all that is necessary in formulating a system of school music teaching is to order from some hack writer a very large number of sight-singing exercises, containing more and more difficult tonal problems and increasingly complex rhythm combinations, until in the last book of each course we find the most involved vocal music ordinarily encountered.
But the plans of those who made these various music systems left out a highly important factor in the equation. They said:
A well graded series of sight-singing exercises, plus a good drill-master, plus the presence of all the children will make good music readers of everyone, and we therefore shall become a singing nation with choirs and choral societies in every hamlet.
But in all this they failed to consider the child—his feelings, his instincts, his capacities. So the complete equation in actual practise read something like this:
A series of well graded sight-singing exercises PLUS a good drill-master, PLUS a lot of ,lively and intelligent children who have a genuine interest in music as art but no instinctive inclination at all for music as dry, technical drill—results in a community which does n<pt sing because it now no longer has a teacher standing before it with stick in hand compelling it to; a community that does not love music because it has come to think of music as uninteresting and uninspiring drudgery.
As a result of the kind of material put into the various series of school music books, music teaching in the public schools by the end of the century had come to mean a dreary monotony of uninspiring sight-singing; a subject intensely disliked by many and endured by others only because of the instinctive -satisfaction that results from overcoming any kind of a real difficulty and because of the natural rivalry that any development of skill entails.
Then came the revolution in language reading methods, and this reversal of policy with regard to teaching language, together with the growing insistence of all thinking educators that school work must be planned psychologically rather than merely logically, led the school music supervisor seriously to question his methods of procedure. School music was meeting the immediate tests of school work. It was being planned and executed in well organized fashion. The lesson demanded concentrated attention on the part of the pupil. To be sure the child’s attention often had to be stimulated by external means such as threats of after-school work and promises of various and sundry knuckle rappings with the ferrule which the supervisor carried with him as a part of his musical equipment—if the upper grade boy did not “sing his scale” when called upon. But the work probably was done as well as the work in abstract arithmetic and grammar, and perhaps almost as well as in the case of the formal reading and spelling that were the rule at that time, and the interest was perhaps as great as in these other subjects.
But the interest was not in music as an art, as a thing of beauty, as a thing that made the school and the world happier because of its presence. The exercise called the “music lesson” did not exalt the child, neither did it increase the group feeling of the school. And certainly it never occurred to the children of. those days to use their school music as after-school recreation. So, although our music teaching in the last decades of the nineteenth century passed certain immediate tests by means of which school work is often evaluated, it almost wholly failed to meet those nmote tests connected with an increase in the number of choirs and choral societies and concert courses together with an attitude of growing interest in an appreciation of all good_ music. And it failed in many instances to meet the requirement that art teaching of any sort must make human life itself richer and fuller and nobler if it is
[The following paper, read by Karl W. Gehrkens, of Oberlin College, before the Music Teachers’ National Association, is particularly interesting to all music teachers who follow the work of the public schools. It describes the interesting development and evolution of school music material and gives pedagogical reasons why the present-day methods are leaning largely toward first principles. The most significant thing is the fact that the men and women responsible for the music material have been progressive and broad minded—a most hopeful sign in education.—The Editor]
The rise and growth of the school music movement in America has been a record of marvelous but somewhat inconsistent development. The inception of the plan to teach
The AMERICAN CONTRALTO Sings at Trenton, Feb. 16—Immediately Reengaged For Next Season
KATHRYN MEISLE IS GIVEN AN OVATION
To the Teachers’ Chorus goes the credit for the introduction of another SINGER OF EXCEPTIONAL ART to the city’s music lovers. Miss Kathryn Meisle, contralto, who was the soloist of the first seasonal concert by the teachers in the Crescent Temple last evening, is AN ARTIST OF REAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS and the possessor of a voice delightful to hear. The first note of her first number, “O, Don Fatale” from Verdi’s “Don Carlos” brought an audible stir and the conclusion of the air found the audience UNANIMOUS IN APPLAUSE OF THE ARTISTRY DISPLAYED. DEPTH AND RANGE, COLORING AND FLEXIBILITY ARE ALL QUALITIES OF THE NATURAL CONTRALTO WITH WHICH MISS MEISLE IS GIFTED, AND SHE ENHANCES HER ENDOWMENT WITH RARE MUSICIANSHIP. Several encores were compelled at the conclusion of the programmed numbers and then it was with apparent reluctance that the audience allowed her to leave the stage. Trenton is slow to express more than lukewarm approval of the newcomer in any field of art, BUT MISS MEISLE WON BY SHEER ABILITY AND CHARM AND WILL BE WELCOME WHENEVER ARRANGEMENTS CAN BE MADE FOR HER RETURN. — TRENTON EVENING TIMES, FEBRUARY 17, 1923.
KATHRYN MEISLE MAKES PRONOUNCED HIT.
Success derived from genuine merit was attained by the Trenton Teachers’ Chorus and the gifted contralto soloist, Miss Kathryn Meisle, of Philadelphia, last evening before an appreciative audience of music lovers, at the concert held at Crescent Temple.
According to music critics it is contended that Miss Meisle is a second Schumann Heink and POSSIBLY THE BEST SINGING ARTIST THAT HAS APPEARED HERE FOR SOME TIME. Her personality is most gracious and the RICH TONE OF HER VOICE IS COMBINED WITH EXTRAORDINARY RANGE. She is widely recognized as a natural contralto. MUCH DEMAND WAS APPARENT FOR HAVING MISS MEISLE APPEAR HERE AGAIN. There were three encores required of her at the conclusion of last evening’s concert.—STATE GAZETTE, TRENTON, FEBRUARY 17, 1923.
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